suggestion Locking Old Threads

I think older threads from several months prior should be locked. Chances are, the person has already been answered, and it will allow more discussion back and forth in real time, rather than expecting the OP to reply months later.

I understand they can be resources and references for prior conversations... But on the opposite side of the fence, I think allowing responses to older posts just makes it seem like you are replying to a ghost, and it gives the impression that the site is dead or dying. This would also prevent people from reviving a year old thread, just to share an opinion about an aged topic.

Is there is a way to lock threads? Maybe at a comment threshold of around 3-5 months.

This forum seems really great compared to sites like Reddit for feedback and the like, but it just needs to clean up a little.
 
Maybe lock the threads that we know the guy who made it has left or has had no activity for the past 6 months or so. Even then, many retrospective replies were helpful for other members of this forum, even if the guy has left here, doesn't mean the replies to his threads aren't helpful to others.
 
i think there are certain threads that could benefit from a question answer scheme.
Once the thread is marked as answered it could be closed.

However there are other threads that benefit from ongoing.. such as rate the last film you saw.
The thread has hundreds of pages and lives on.
 
Well alrighty, just a thought. It feels weird to post a comment to a thread that had a last reply from a year ago.

If I hesitate to comment on that thread, I know others might too. You don't think new people may feel that the site doesn't get a lot of traffic for that reason?
 
I agree with all of the above, and I think I'm right in remembering that in the poll while back about what to do with old threads, members voted to keep them open and searchable forever, with only some extremely ancient and irrelevant content to be removed at the discretion of the moderators. Having new replies every now and then refreshes the content.

Though I also do quite like the idea of the question/answer scheme that @sfoster proposes. Not to limit the number of replies or content but to highlight the quality of a reply as a solution. The person who posted the thread could mark one reply as 'this answered my question', like the green tick on the StackOverflow forum or something. This would only apply to some threads where the members were asking for help and maybe they'd have to select a specific category (e.g. 'QA') to enable this feature. The idea of having one reply marked as the answer would retrospectively help new users navigate to it when they have the same problem with their project. Anyway just a couple of thoughts there for you to ponder over! 😉

(rest removed)
 
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Finally, on a slight sidenote, if there's any thread that should be locked, it's 'The Unknown Warrior'. I can't help feeling that after a fair amount of constructive feedback it's creating nothing but negativity and bickering. Lively discussion is always nice, but no one ever had any fun talking to a brick wall. :bang:
I don't understand this desire to lock threads. To keep people who want to discuss
from doing so. Much of the discussion in "The Unknown Warrior" thread is me; I
am enjoying the discussion. When I am no longer interested I will stop. When Same_HA
tires of the discussion he will stop. When you feel reading the thread is no longer worth
your time you can stop reading. Locking a thread stops discussion by people who want
to keep discussing.
 
I don't understand this desire to lock threads. To keep people who want to discuss
from doing so. Much of the discussion in "The Unknown Warrior" thread is me; I
am enjoying the discussion. When I am no longer interested I will stop. When Same_HA
tires of the discussion he will stop. When you feel reading the thread is no longer worth
your time you can stop reading. Locking a thread stops discussion by people who want
to keep discussing.

Yeah ok, fair enough. Freedom of speech. 🙂
 
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I have some time and experience here on indietalk too. I don't see
whymonarae's, Scoopicman's, Cracker Funk's or mbncinema's replies
as wasting peoples time. Yes, their replies were almost a year after the
last one and Future_Screen never responded - she rarely ever responded
to any of her threads – but the new replies are helpful for someone
interested in in this, specific subject.

If someone wants to contribute to an old thread I think that's great. If
an old thread is revived by discussion I think that's a good thing. Yes,
the OP gets nothing from it, but new members might be helped.

This site cannot waste peoples time. If someone wants to read and
comment on old threads it's not a waste of time to them. I don't see
bumping old threads as a mistake to be avoided.

Perhaps what could be done is to merge the discussion of thread locking
and allow the “write horror without disgust” discussion to continue.

When I say "wasting peoples time" I am referring to someone that is trying to help the OP in a real world situation.
Like the Op has a very specific request, someone spends 20 minutes doing a long thoughtful reply, then afterwards finds out the thread was a year old and the OP will never even read that reply they just typed. That person may very likely feel like they have had their time wasted.

A visual cue for when threads are old, such as a separate background color, would save this particular person from wasting their time.
It also doesn't lock any threads and anybody that wants to continue the discussion would be free to do so.
 
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